1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a multifunction printing device including a plurality of data receiving units, wherein data received by a plurality of data receiving units is processed using a shared pool of a memory.
2. Description of the Related Art
There has been known a conventional multifunction printing device provided with a variety of different functions, such as a copy function, a video print function, a facsimile function, and an answering machine function. The multifunctions printing device receives a variety types of image data using a plurality of different data receiving units, such as a PC interface, an image scanner, a facsimile modem, and a video output terminal. The received image data is stored in a RAM provided to the multifunction printing device while processed into print data. Then, the multifunction printing device executes printing operations for forming an image based on the print data.
Also, voice data can be received as a message from an incoming caller. The voice data is stored in a shared pool of memory in the RAM.
Because the multifunction printing device is provided with a variety of different functions, there is an increasing demand for the multifunction printing device, particularly, in small offices.
However, in order to reduce production costs of the multifunction printing device, a pool of memory of the RAM is shared by the plurality of functions to process various data. Therefore, when a great deal of data needs to be processed by the different functions at the same time, there may be insufficient free space in the shared pool of memory. For example, when the video print function is executed to print a video image based on video image data, a large amount of voice data may be stored in the shared pool of memory. As a result, sufficient free space in the share pool may not be available to process the video image data at a desired resolution. In this case, the video image data is processed at a resolution compulsorily reduced depending on the amount of a free space of the shared pool. Therefore, the video image is printed out at a resolution other than the resolution desired by a user.